Speaking at the 2019 Pensions Strategy Conference organised by Axis Pensions Group, the Managing Director said “one of the key things we are trying to do is that we would like to keep these indigenous banks locally owned. We will prefer that either the private placement goes to Ghanaians or even back to the original shareholders.

“If not, we
will try and list them on our stock exchange so that everyday Ghanaians can
actually own pieces of the GAT. We will be very prone to viable operating banks
that hopefully will help us to compete with some of our foreign banks.”

The plan of
GAT, he said, was to help the banks meet the capital requirement by the Bank of
Ghana (BoG) and not to take over, hence the need for players in the pension
industry to partner them in that regard.

“Our plan
is not to take over the banks; the plan is to help them meet BoG requirement.
We will position them well so that in five years’ time when we are leaving, we
can leave behind viable, profitable growing banks that can compete with the
foreign banks,” he said.

GAT, he said, had in place a team of bank experts who were doing
an overall business review of the banks and that was helping to shape the plans
after investing in the banks.

“We are
formulating our plans around how we will improve governance for the local banks
and what controls and changes we need to make.

“We will
look at management and see how we can strengthen it. If it requires changes, we
will discuss those with shareholders and board of the banks and we will make
changes there. If we need to up skill and build capabilities, we will look to
do that as well,” he said.

He added
that in the area of operations, managing risk was one of the key things GAT was
focusing on as part of the business review.

“Overall,
we are developing holistic strategies and plans for these banks that we will
work with over the next three to five years,” he said.

2019 Pensions Strategy Conference

The
conference, organised by Axis Pensions Group, brought together trustees from
various pension funds in the country to enable them to understand investment
strategies of their fund managers in the face of some economic challenges,
including the fast depreciation of the cedi and the banking sector clean-up
exercise.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Group, Mr Afriyie Oware, explained that “there was the need for us to organise this programme to assure investors that there are programmes underway by government to address the situation and to also assure investors that as people deploying capital for investment in the economy, we also hold the key to solving this perennial problem of exchange rate depreciation.”